The floorboards were cold against her skin. The photograph lay face-up beside her, those dead eyes now staring at the peeling floral wallpaper. You're home now. The words hummed in her skull, a vile lullaby.
Reason, her last frail shield, cracked. This wasn't a threat from outside. It was in the walls. In the history. In the very air she was breathing.
A raw, animal sound tore from her throat. She scrambled to her feet, kicking the rosewood box away. It skittered across the floor, hitting the leg of a sheet-draped armchair with a soft thud. She needed to get out. Now.
She grabbed her car keys, phone, the damn photo—evidence, it was evidence—and bolted for the door, fumbling with the new, heavy-duty lock. The bolt finally slid back with a solid clunk. She yanked the door open.
And stopped.
The late afternoon sun slanted across the overgrown front path, dappled and ordinary. Her car sat where she'd left it. The world was continuing, oblivious. Where would she go? To the police? "A ghost left me a creepy photo, officer. Also, my family dies on schedule." They'd nod, make a note, maybe call for a wellness check. To a friend? She'd seem hysterical. This burden, this curse, was hers alone. The house had made sure of that.
Slowly, her grip on the doorframe tightened. Running felt like losing. Like confirming the photo's silent claim. You're home. If she fled, she'd just be waiting for September 9th somewhere else, jumping at shadows.
No.
She stepped back inside and closed the door. The lock engaged with a definitive sound. She was trapped, but she had chosen it.
Her first act was one of pure defiance. She marched to the fireplace, struck a match from an old box on the mantel, and held the flame to the corner of the photograph. The glossy paper blackened, curled, resisting before finally catching. She dropped it into the grate and watched her own image contort, blister, and vanish into ash. The smell was acrid, chemical. It didn't feel like victory. It felt like burning evidence of a crime no one else believed in.
The act cleared her head, leaving behind a cold, sharp focus. The photo was a message. The box was a delivery system. The folio was the ledger. She needed to understand the rules of this game.
She returned to the study, ignoring the faint scent of burnt plastic in the air. She spread the folio open again, under the harsh light of her desk lamp. This time, she looked beyond the date and the cause of death. She looked at the names, the relationships, the gaps.
Her grandmother, Helen, was the last entry. Before her, Robert Wren (1995, fire). Eleanor remembered a faint, sad story about a great-uncle she'd never met, lost in a tragic accident abroad. The folio said house fire. On September 9th.
She went online, digging deeper, using paid archives this time. Robert Wren. A small obituary confirmed the date. A follow-up article, a week later, was brief: "Cause of Blaze Undetermined; No Foul Play Suspected." The property, a cottage in Cornwall, was a total loss.
Foul play. The thought was a cold needle. What if none of it was accidental? Not the horse throwing Alistair, not Caroline's hanging, not the fire. What if they were all… orchestrated? By what? By whom?
Her eyes drifted to the family tree sketched in the front of the folio. Lines of descent, marriages. A pattern, almost invisible, began to emerge. It wasn't just direct lineage. Spouses died too. Margaret Wren, Alistair's wife, same day. Others who married into the family… some died on the date, some didn't. It was inconsistent.
Except for one thing: the recipient of the "keepsake" always died. The folio didn't record who received the box, only who died. But the letters… Nana's vague replies about "keepsakes." Mrs. Peabody's warning: "Don't take it."
Once taken, never free.
Did receiving the box seal your fate? Was opening it the final trigger?
She had taken the box from the attic. She had opened it. And now, she had received her own.
A new, more practical terror gripped her. The box today had materialized inside a locked house. The photo had shown her watch, lost inside this very house. The violation was absolute. It wasn't just watching. It was here, moving things, arranging them.
She needed to see everything. Now.
She spent the next hour on the security monitor, reviewing all camera feeds from the moment she'd left to the moment she'd returned. She watched at quarter speed, then frame by frame. The front door camera showed the empty foyer. The timecode ticked. 14:03:22. Empty floor. 14:03:23. The box was there. No blur, no person. A digital ghost. An impossibility.
She checked the other cameras. The back garden, silent. The side alley, empty. The feed from the camera inside the sitting room, pointed at the French windows. At 14:03:05, the curtain by the window twitched. Not from the wind. The window was shut. It was a distinct, sharp jerk, as if someone had brushed past it from inside the room. A room that was supposed to be empty.
The blood in her veins turned to ice. It wasn't just here. It was mobile. Intelligent.
Her phone buzzed on the desk, making her jump. A local number she didn't recognize.
"Miss Wren? Eleanor Wren?" A man's voice, polite, professional.
"Yes?" Her voice was tight.
"This is David Parrish, from Parrish Historical Society. We spoke to your grandmother a few years back about the house's architecture. I'm just in the area and heard she'd passed. My condolences. I was wondering… since you've inherited, might you have a moment? I have a copy of the original surveyor's report she was interested in. Thought you might like it."
A historical society. Knowledge. A link to the house that wasn't familial, wasn't cursed. It felt like a lifeline.
"I… yes. Yes, that would be kind. When?"
"I'm just down the lane. Would now be terribly inconvenient?"
She hesitated. A stranger. But he knew Nana. He had documents. Information was a weapon. "Now is fine."
"Excellent. I'll be there in five minutes."
Five minutes. She rushed to the front window, peering through the grimy glass. The path was empty. She waited, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. At exactly four minutes later, a sensible grey sedan pulled up. A man in his late fifties, wearing a waxed jacket and corduroy trousers, got out. He carried a slim leather folder. He looked exactly as he sounded: harmless, academic.
She unlocked the door before he could knock.
"Miss Wren. David Parrish." He offered a smile that didn't quite reach his keen, grey eyes. They swept past her, taking in the hallway, the stairs, with the swift appraisal of a man used to studying structures. "The house looks just the same. May I?"
She led him to the sitting room, the less dusty one. She didn't offer tea. He didn't seem to expect it. He sat on the edge of an armchair and opened his folder.
"Here. The 1898 surveyor's report. Your grandmother was particularly interested in the annotations about the foundation." He handed her a photocopied page.
Eleanor took it, her eyes scanning the spidery handwriting. Details about mortar, about a natural spring beneath the east wing… and a note, circled lightly in pencil, in a different hand: "Client insisted on specific alterations to original plans for west-facing room on second floor. Unusual. Cited 'lineage requirements.'"
The west-facing room on the second floor. That was the bedroom she was using.
"What 'lineage requirements'?" she asked, her mouth dry.
Parrish spread his hands. "Ah, that's the mystery. Families often have their quirks, especially old ones like yours. Secret passages, hidden rooms, designated heir's chambers. That sort of thing. Your grandmother thought it might explain some of the… odd acoustics in that part of the house."
Odd acoustics. She thought of the sounds she'd dismissed as settling timber.
"Did she ever find anything? A hidden room?"
"Not that she told me." He leaned forward slightly. "But she did ask a rather singular question, the last time we spoke. She asked if I'd ever come across references in local folklore to a 'tenancy agreement' that wasn't about land or money, but about time."
The air in the room grew still. "Time?"
"Yes. The phrasing stuck with me. She said, 'Is it possible for a family to rent its future?' I thought it was the grief talking—your grandfather had just died. But she was quite insistent." He paused, watching her closely. "Has the house been… speaking to you, Miss Wren?"
The question was so direct, so jarringly apt, it stole her breath. She looked at him, this polite, ordinary man with his sharp eyes, and a war raged inside her. Trust was dangerous. But isolation was fatal.
"It's leaving me things," she heard herself say, the words quiet and stark in the dusty room. "A box. A photograph. My family… they all die on the same day."
David Parrish didn't flinch. He didn't look surprised or concerned. He simply nodded, slowly, as if she'd confirmed a long-held hypothesis. He reached into his inner jacket pocket and withdrew something small, wrapped in a clean white handkerchief. He unwrapped it carefully and placed it on the low table between them.
It was a fragment of ceramic, glazed in deep blue and cream. On it, painted in fine, fading lines, was part of a symbol. It looked like the tip of a wing, or perhaps a stylised flame.
"I found this," he said softly, "embedded in the mortar of your garden wall last year, when your grandmother allowed me to take a few samples. It's very old. And it's not from around here. I believe it's a piece of a 'witness.'"
"A witness?"
"An object bound to a place, or a pact. To observe. To ensure terms are met." He met her gaze. "The folklore your grandmother mentioned… it speaks of agreements made with entities that think in generations, not years. The house isn't haunted by ghosts, Miss Wren. It is the instrument. And the box, the photograph… they're not threats. They're receipts."
The world narrowed to the fragment on the table, to his calm, terrible words. Receipts.
"For what?" she whispered.
"For services rendered," Parrish said. He stood up, gathering his folder. His visit felt abruptly concluded. "The original beneficiary of such an agreement usually gets something of immense value. Prosperity. Talent. Survival against impossible odds. The price is paid later, by the lineage, on a schedule. A… tenancy agreement in time, as your grandmother said."
He walked to the door. She followed, numb.
"What do I do?" The question was a plea.
At the threshold, he turned. The polite mask had slipped entirely, revealing something colder, more avid beneath. "The agreement has a logic. All contracts do. Find the original terms. Find out what was purchased. The answer won't be in a ledger of deaths, Miss Wren. It will be in a record of life. Something your family gained when this all began."
He stepped out into the twilight. "And check your walls. Especially in that west-facing room. Sometimes, the witness isn't just an object."
He drove away, leaving her standing in the open doorway, the evening breeze chilling her skin. She looked back into the dark maw of the house, then down at her phone. She had a new email notification. It was from the security system. Motion Alert: Sitting Room. 18:47.
The time stamp was seventeen minutes ago. When she and Parrish had been in the hallway, saying goodbye. The sitting room had been empty.
She played the clip. The camera showed the empty room. The curtain by the French window twitched again, violently this time. And then, on the mantelpiece, a single, crumbling piece of mortar dislodged itself from between two old bricks and fell onto the hearth with a soundless puff of dust.
As if something had been pressing against it from inside the wall. Listening.
Sometimes, the witness isn't just an object.
The tenancy agreement was in effect. The rent was due in five days.
And she was now certain she was not alone in the house. She was sharing it with the landlord.